Editorial: Landmark win for California students

Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of Students Matter David Welch makes comments on the Vergara v. California lawsuit verdict in Los Angeles, Tuesday, June 10, 2014. A judge struck down tenure and other job protections for California's public school teachers as unconstitutional Tuesday, saying such laws harm students, especially poor and minority ones, by saddling them with bad teachers. In a landmark decision that could influence the gathering debate over tenure across the country, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu cited the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education in ruling that students have a fundamental right to equal education.

In a victory for students, a judge ruled Tuesday that some current job protections for teachers in California were unconstitutional as they created unequal educational conditions for the state’s students.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu, who heard the nonjury trial in Vergara v. California, a lawsuit challenging several state laws relating to treatment of public school teachers, wrote that certain protections, like tenure after two years and “last-in, first out” layoff policies that favor seniority, bolstered the effects of “grossly ineffective teachers on students,” and thus violated the equal-protection clause of the state constitution.

In siding with nine students who brought the suit, the judge agreed that a disproportionate share of these teachers are found in schools with mostly minority and low-income students.

The evidence was “compelling,” he wrote. “Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”

Education reformers have long urged the state Legislature to defy the teachers unions and change laws that make getting rid of even “grossly ineffective” teachers a costly challenge.

“This is pure gold. A major victory,” Gloria Romero, a former Democratic state senator from Los Angeles and author of the state’s parent-trigger law, told us. “This could not be politically achieved in the Legislature, where it should have.”

Even though Judge Treu stayed his ruling pending appeals, the landmark decision gives momentum to education reformers who want to make it easier for school districts to remove ineffective or incompetent teachers. While the state’s largest teachers union vowed to appeal, lawmakers can, and should, accept the decision and recast the challenged statutes.

The judge cited evidence that, “it could take anywhere from two to almost 10 years and cost $50,000 to $450,000 or more to bring these cases to conclusion under the Dismissal Statues.”

Further, his ruling called California an “outlier” among states when it came to tenure, noting that “32 states have a three-year period, and nine states have four or five.” California is one of five states that grants teachers tenure after two years or less. Four states don’t have tenure at all.

“This court finds that both students and teachers are unfairly, unnecessarily, and for no legally cognizable reason (let alone a compelling one), disadvantaged by the current Permanent Employment Statute,” Judge Treu wrote.

The judge left the job of reforming teacher job protections to the Legislature, where, as Ms. Romero noted, it belongs. It is time for Sacramento to acknowledge that it has created a system designed more to benefit teachers unions, who are major contributors to Democratic campaigns and causes, than students.

At a minimum, lawmakers should align teacher job protections in California with those in a majority of states. Longer-term, however, lawmakers should look beyond the scope of the Vergara decision and seek to make California a leader in the movement to put children first in the educational system.

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